this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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Not every sector of the economy is questionable, but where data influences overall metrics like GDP, there have been well-documented issues of data integrity. For example, population counts.
This research paper from 2013 shows many more examples of discrepancies.
The "discrepancies" you refer in this state-sponsored research paper published by a hostile, violent, authoritarian, genocidal, regressive, and oppressive regime that has held power in its country for decades is hardly to be trusted at face value. This authoritarian country has a cultural history of lying, cheating, and manipulating the truth for their own personal and racist objectives. It'll take a long time before a country like that will be civilized enough to be trustworthy. That said, if you actually READ the report, it talks about primarily logistical issues, 2 political events (GLF and Tienanmen) that have absolutely nothing to do with the trustworthiness of the their data but rather are quite literally propagandistic elements to make the reader BELIEVE that Chinese reporting is somehow more untrustworthy than the author's of the paper when when the number of examples of falsified data coming out of their own country could fill multiple volumes.
Meanwhile, most of the report is about potential discrepancies, not actual discrepancies, with very few examples peppered throughout to make it seem like they're saying more than they are.
At the same time, China literally publishes five-year plans, executes on them, reports on them every year, then publishes new five-year plans. How much more transparent than literally every other nation on the planet could China be before you admit you're wrong? Do they need to build a massive surveillance project and ghettoize all of their lumpen so they can get you accurate population counts like the North Atlantic countries do?
Regarding transparency, governments such as the US, UK, and Australia publish not only the results of metrics like inflation but also the methodology applied to determine the results.
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/methods-overview.htm
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices#methodology
https://www.abs.gov.au/methodologies/consumer-price-index-australia-methodology/mar-quarter-2023
Can you direct me to the resource where I can find a similar level of detail for the Chinese economy?
Nope. Why are those specific metrics more important than 5-year plans? What makes it "more transparent" instead of simply "more accurate"? Who are the publications for? Private investors trying to make a profit? Is it possible that China isn't willing to put as much effort into reporting for that purpose? Why can't the US, UK, and Australia publish 5-year plans?
Because a plan is just an intention or wishful thinking. Inflation data is an actual, measurable result.
Inflation data is one of the most common economic measurements and it can be reasonably expected that every country should be able to not only report on the inflation metric itself, but provide details on the measurement and the methodology used so that every country, globally, knows that the metric reported by each country is transparent and credible. Understanding the methodology then allows analysts to investigate the underlying drivers of the inflation result, confirm its accuracy, and compare it between countries by using similar methodologies.
Simply put, if a country can't provide detailed explanations on how they determine an important metric like inflation, then what does that suggest about other metrics or results that they share?
Also, the 5-year plans are tracked and reported on. They are consistently delivered on. When there is variance that variance is analyzed and the learnings are incorporated into future plans. They've been doing this for decades. It's not wishful thinking.
Inflation is pretty fraught. No one seems to have a good grip on what to do with it. There's multiple ways for every country to measure inflation, most them have to do with the prices of specific categories of goods. How does that work when most of the goods used for an index are price controlled? How do you measure such a thing when prices are driven by both market dynamics and public policy?
Harping on inflation is sort of like saying China should be paying attention to yardage gains on the gridiron while they're busy playing baseball. China is playing a fundamentally different game than the North Atlantic. Part of that game is trapping capitalists by incentivizing them to invest without it being in the capitalists' long term interest. Of course there's going to be a difference between Chinese financial reporting and European - China is trying to undermine the European world order using European money freely given by Europeans (and their settler descendants).
That doesn't mean they are fudging numbers and completely incapable of getting accurate information. It just means their focus is different and they'll only put in the effort they have to in order to attract investment. The rest of their efforts are going towards building and executing 5-year plans that actually contribute to their society and preventing the North Atlantic from infiltrating, invading, starving or nuking them.
But yeah, ok. They could report inflation numbers better. Why don't you go talk to people who moved their businesses to China or invest billions in China and see if they think your complaint matches their reality. Until then, you're literally picking at nits.